Insider Protests Beauty Pageants' Ugly Side

SANTA CRUZ, CALIF. — She has gained 30 pounds, doesn't wear makeup and no longer glues her swimsuit to her body.

Now she wears blue jeans and sweat shirts, and she feels most comfortable when she can be ''just plain ugly.''

It has been nearly two years since Michelle Anderson of Santa Cruz infiltrated the Miss California Pageant and during the finale unfurled a banner that read ''pageants hurt all women.''

What followed was a full-scale media blitz - Anderson's story was carried in newspapers around the country and as far away as Germany. She even got a guest spot on the Geraldo show.

''I had no idea that the story would be as big as it was,'' Anderson said recently. ''It was just a whirlwind after the protest. People were calling me wanting to buy the rights to my life story, make a movie of the week. One guy called and wanted to make a poster of me.''

Anderson, 23, admits she made some mistakes the first time around. Still, she says, she would do it again - in a heartbeat.

''I have no regrets about what I did. My message is that pageants demean all women in a variety of ways, and my experience on the inside only reaffirmed that it's true,'' she said. ''Because real women don't look like that and real women feel terrible that they don't look like that.''

Anderson said women in the pageant put duct tape under their breasts to create cleavage and starved to be thin. She said contestants would spray adhesive all over their bodies to keep their suits in place during the swimsuit competition.

After the Miss California Pageant in June 1988, it took about a year for her life to return to normal. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in May 1989 with honors and an undergraduate degree in community studies (the study of social change). In addition, she has written a book about her experiences inside the Miss California Pageant. It's called Becoming Barbie: Tales of an Undercover Beauty Queen.

Anderson got the idea for the book's title when she thought back to a make-over session between the Miss Santa Cruz and Miss California pageants in the spring of 1988.

''There were these people there and they kept putting more and more makeup on me, and making my hair bigger and bigger,'' Anderson recalled. ''When they were done, they stood back and crooned, 'Oh my, who does she look like? She looks just like Barbie.' It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I thought I was going to vomit.''

Anderson has an agent in New York trying to sell her 400-page manuscript. ''No luck so far, but I've gotten a lot of rejection letters,'' she said.

After the pageant, Anderson received more than 100 letters from across the country. Most were overwhelmingly positive, but some were hostile.

''I got letters from some men who were just totally threatened by what I did,'' she said. One man even wrote her to say that she was ugly and a sore loser and that ''all feminists should go to hell.''

In 1989, a year after the onstage protest, Anderson protested the Miss Santa Cruz Pageant and the Miss California Pageant again - this time from the outside.

''I am most passionate about women's issues, but my second love is animal rights,'' Anderson said. ''I will fight for any issues that broaden our humanity and increase our caring capacity.''

Although people may recognize Anderson only as the self-styled ''double agent'' with a feminist message, she says her activism career is far from over.

''The Miss California thing is not the sum total of my activist life,'' she said. ''It was a part of my life, but I'm going to do a lot of other things, too. Besides, it sure would be a bummer to peak at 21.''